Airmotiv 6: First Impressions Review

[hemster]

Hey smithde2961,

Welcome to the lounge!

One thing to think about is... if you need amplification, then the Airmotives are the ticket. However, list your other components and listening preferences so we can better suggest things.

I have the Airmotive6s and I think their amplification is what I needed over the anemic amps in my Marantz 5003 receiver. The tweeter in the Airmotives are fantastic!

List your other gear and we'd be happy to help.

[daiku1]

What was your listening distance? Have you tried different setup distances?

[aliminas]

Smaller room might do away with Emo Pro and save you some amp and cable purchasing. For movies you need a subwoofer anyways so might as well go for it. For bigger room i would get Ref.

[djreef]

How do these image? Is there any stridency in the crossover region? I'm real sensitive in the 2kH range. Thanx ahead guys.

DJ

[bobbyt]

It's going to be hard to get an objective opinion about these, because once you get to a certain point where you're not obviously missing something, you're just going to be hearing the differences between these and whatever you came from.

The 6s are good enough that there's nothing missing. Anything past that is just a comparison with my ATC SCM12, which are slightly larger (35 pound) bookshelves, with a bottom end very disproportionate to their size due to the massive "super linear" driver & magnet.

The first thing I heard from the 6s was pronounced mid-bass, somewhat one-note-ish, likely due to the fact that they're ported and were too close to the wall (<6"), and also on stands that are too short (tweeters 8" below my ears, and the ribbon tweeters are vertically narrow).

After pulling them out from the wall and propping the fronts to point them upward (don't have taller stands yet), they cleaned right up and don't sound anything other than good. I don't know what "stridency in the crossover region" sounds like, but I played some old frequency sweep test tracks from my car audio days, and there's no "handoff" or anything like that.

Sorry I can't wax poetic and give adjectives weird new meanings to describe what I hear, but it's just music to me. The image/soundstage is great...when I watch TV I can completely forget about the speakers, as it sounds like characters are talking from behind the screen. Music-wise I'm quite happy with them.

[djreef]

Are they peaky in the 2-3K region, as in disproportionately louder.

DJ

[djreef]

OK, I bought a pair. All I can add to what has already been said is they take more than 100 hours to truly break in. Maybe it's the kevlar in the LF driver, I dunno. Oh, and they beat the crap outta my Dynaudio BM6 MKIIs where listening fatigue is concerned. The Dynaudios are way too bright, and 'dug in' in the lower HF to the point where some CDs were flat out painful to listen to. The Airmotivs have relatively few issues in this region now that they're finally broken in. I think the Dynaudios are going bye bye.

DJ

[solidstate]

Have you guys ever heard of an outfit called Adam Audio? Air Motion Transformer concept originally developed by Dr. Oskar Heil?

I'd put money on the fact that ribbon tweet is from them... or it's licensed from them and built by Tangband or one of the other mainland outfits...

It sure looks like an X-ART tweet based design to me!



PS THIS IS A GOOD THING!!! Only other tweet around better is the Raal!

PSS Can a moderator remove my "warning level" BS

[Nemesis.ie]

Now where are the 10s and 15s?

[hemster]

Apr 10, 2012 15:46:46 GMT -5 Nemesis.ie said:

Now where are the 10s and 15s?

Powered 10s and 15s? Yikes, that'll be something! (OTOH I'll need to go to 1 meal/day to save up for them. I'm already down to 2/day saving for the XMC).

[Nemesis.ie]

Well there should definitely be 8s and 10s coming.

[emodog]

Any ideas on when the new reference line will be released? And what the price points might be?

I am very interested to see this new line. I imagine it will compete with the GoldenEar Triton line and the RT Songtowers (but hopefully at a lower price range).

I once saw linked on this forum an article that said ribbon tweeters have a distinctive type of distortion. Is that resolved with tweeters like the Raal and the Emo tweeter?

[sancho89]

I own the airmotiv 4, and wow. simply wow. My ERM is my computer speakers for now.
accurate music reproduction, soundstage, decay and all the good stuff. Can't imagine what the airmotiv 6 will sound like.
Can't wait for the new reference with new tweeters.

Emotiva, take my money please, just gimme the new reference speakers. I can't wait too long, the goldenear triton is calling out to me.

[oris37]

I have been wanting music in my office for a while now, so when I saw the holiday sale I picked up a pair of airmotiv 6's as soon as I saw them. I have what I think is a pretty darn good system in my dedicated theater. The problem was, I found myself working and wearing cheap cans in my office more than I was relaxing in my theater.

Packaging was the same excelent double boxed, wrapped in cloth, treasures from China. I placed them on the corners of my 6 foot drafting board, near field style I guess they call it. I connected them from the rca out of my xonar stx essence sound card to the rca inputs of the speakers and Itunes does the dirty work.

The card seems to have plenty of power to drive the 6's louder than I care to listen. I have been listening for a few hours each night ths week. My first impression was positve. The folded ribbon tweeter is very nice. I think Emotiva is on to something with this folded ribbon business. Very smooth, womens voices sound amazing. I love a rock band that can work in a piano and violin in to the mix. These ribbons are able to pull out the little details from those two instruments that make it seem like the band in in the office working with me to check these drawings.... I am not not sure if it is because I have these set up as near fields on my board, but the imaging and depth is simply stunning. I had to play around with the speaker postions in my theater for weeks to get this kind of depth and focus. I haven't tried them set up as stereo speakers, but the with as good as there sounding I think they will be a permanate fixture on my board.

To be honest I really like full range speakers with a sub or two pounding out the low notes, but these really do carry their own. The bass is tight and never muddy. The bass seems realistic and has the right sense of weight to it (if that makes sense) for most all of the music I listen to. Of course there are a few songs from my favorite band (Blue October) that have some very low electonic notes that these 6" drivers just can't reach. I don't think it would be fair to expect them to either. Some say these could use a sub for a little extra bottom end grunt. However these ribbons are just so dang smooth I can easily overlook the hit-you-in-the-chest bass a 2.1 system would provide. I am going to stick with a this simple 2.0 set up and my ear to ear grin for the time being.

I like these more and more everytime I listen. Looks like I will be working from home more often!
Nice Job Emotiva. I guess it was my time to go pro.

[garbulky]

Nov 16, 2012 21:44:15 GMT -5 oris37 said:

I have been wanting music in my office for a while now, so when I saw the holiday sale I picked up a pair of airmotiv 6's as soon as I saw them. I have what I think is a pretty darn good system in my dedicated theater. The problem was, I found myself working and wearing cheap cans in my office more than I was relaxing in my theater.

Packaging was the same excelent double boxed, wrapped in cloth, treasures from China. I placed them on the corners of my 6 foot drafting board, near field style I guess they call it. I connected them from the rca out of my xonar stx essence sound card to the rca inputs of the speakers and Itunes does the dirty work.

The card seems to have plenty of power to drive the 6's louder than I care to listen. I have been listening for a few hours each night ths week. My first impression was positve. The folded ribbon tweeter is very nice. I think Emotiva is on to something with this folded ribbon business. Very smooth, womens voices sound amazing. I love a rock band that can work in a piano and violin in to the mix. These ribbons are able to pull out the little details from those two instruments that make it seem like the band in in the office working with me to check these drawings.... I am not not sure if it is because I have these set up as near fields on my board, but the imaging and depth is simply stunning. I had to play around with the speaker postions in my theater for weeks to get this kind of depth and focus. I haven't tried them set up as stereo speakers, but the with as good as there sounding I think they will be a permanate fixture on my board.

To be honest I really like full range speakers with a sub or two pounding out the low notes, but these really do carry their own. The bass is tight and never muddy. The bass seems realistic and has the right sense of weight to it (if that makes sense) for most all of the music I listen to. Of course there are a few songs from my favorite band (Blue October) that have some very low electonic notes that these 6" drivers just can't reach. I don't think it would be fair to expect them to either. Some say these could use a sub for a little extra bottom end grunt. However these ribbons are just so dang smooth I can easily overlook the hit-you-in-the-chest bass a 2.1 system would provide. I am going to stick with a this simple 2.0 set up and my ear to ear grin for the time being.

I like these more and more everytime I listen. Looks like I will be working from home more often!
Nice Job Emotiva. I guess it was my time to go pro.

Nice call on that xonar essence stx. I am a big fan of the essence st which I think is one of the top deals you can get in performance sound cards.